Allen, Texas, where the El Paso shooter lived, is one of several affluent suburban communities in the Dallas area served by a commercial online calendar called “Bubblelife.” The name is a play on what used to be a disparaging term for the Park Cities area, a rich, almost all-white enclave…
Never fear, those of you who worried Dallas might actually sort out its paid sick leave situation without state intervention. Wednesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton formally thrust his nose into the lawsuit brought against the city over its ordinance, keeping his longstanding record of supporting local control, except all…
Former Dallas County Schools Superintendent Rick Sorrells is going to spend the next seven years in prison. Sixteen months ago, Sorrells, 73, pleaded guilty to taking more than $3 million in cash and other assets from a company that stocked DCS with cameras for a program that ticketed drivers who…
Finally Tuesday afternoon, Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen made a real apology for whatever he said during a meeting with conservative activist Michael Q. Sullivan and Dustin Burrows, the head of the Texas House Republican caucus, on June 16. We still don’t know what’s on the surreptitious recording of the meeting…
It started almost as soon as police arrested the man accused of murdering 22 people at an El Paso Walmart on Saturday morning. Texas’ political leaders got in line and on their marks before turning to one of the most well-worn pages in their hymnals. Thoughts and prayers abounded, as…
If the people who walk their dogs off the leash in my neighborhood have children at home, I feel sorry for the children. How you train your dog is how you train your kid. So the way they must train their kids is, “Go ahead and play in traffic, little…
Electric scooters whizzing down the street, haphazardly dropped on street corners, and abandoned in parking lots and parks have become ubiquitous sights in Dallas. Last week, Dallas police announced that officers will begin enforcing city ordinances regulating scooter use in entertainment districts and downtown. “The overall goal is so nobody…
Native son Beto O’Rourke has plenty of catching up to do if he hopes to win his home state’s Democratic presidential primary, according to a new poll from Emerson College and The Dallas Morning News. Texas’ Democrats would prefer O’Rourke ran for U.S Senate against John Cornyn rather than president,…
Texas 2020 just got even weirder. Late Monday afternoon, former Irving Mayor Beth Van Duyne, an Observer and tea party favorite, announced she is running for Congress. Van Duyne, most recently an appointee of President Donald Trump to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, will seek the Republican nomination…
Beginning next year, Texas will require nearly all high school seniors to apply for federal financial aid before they graduate, whether they plan on going to college or not. One state to the east, education officials in Louisiana created a similar requirement three years ago. Nearly all high school students…
Whatever happens over the next 15 months, whether President Donald Trump gets reelected and continues his slow-burn destruction of American political norms or a Democrat wins the White House and immediately begins trying to throw 2017-20 way down the memory hole, one piece of the president’s legacy that will endure…
Last week, NBC5 television handed our new mayor, Eric Johnson, his first easy home run pitch to show he can be a leader. A news host asked the mayor to talk about the roiling controversy in heavily poor and minority South Dallas over intensive patrolling of city streets by state…
July is likely to be the hottest month ever recorded on earth. And while the planet has been heating up, so too has been Texas’ renewable energy industry. For the first time in the brief history of wind power, Texas produced more energy from wind than coal, by a small…
The 21-year-old man accused of shooting almost 60 people in El Paso Saturday morning has North Texas ties. Patrick Crusius, identified as the suspect by multiple media reports, graduated from Plano Senior High School in 2017 and lived in Allen, according to Collin County state Rep. Jeff Leach. Police received…
The Dallas Morning News and NBC5 won a three-year campaign Monday for the release of Dallas Police body camera footage showing the last minutes of 32-year-old Anthony Timpa’s life. The video shows the events of the detainment and death of the unarmed man on Aug. 10, 2016. According to the…
The Dallas Police Department needs help. Whether it’s 600 more police officers, better staffing policies, higher salaries or some mix of all three, no one at the department, on the City Council or in the community would dispute that something’s got to give, given the public perception that the city…
Texas Speaker of the House Dennis Bonnen danced with the devil. Now it seems like he might get burned. For the better part of a week, Bonnen has been dealing with the fallout of a totally unforced error that could lead to his losing his role as the third most…
Last week’s proposed changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program could result in more than 300,000 Texans losing food aid. Of those people, many are children who are eligible automatically for free or reduced school lunch because their families receive food stamps. Advocates worry that some of those students will…
Researchers at two Texas universities are launching a project to document investigations into teacher misconduct in the state for the last two decades. David Thompson, a professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, and Catherine Robert, a professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, are building a…
Big changes are coming to The Dallas Morning News’ website in September, as the struggling newspaper company teams with the Washington Post in an effort to improve its website. Word of the change came as the Morning News’ parent company A.H. Belo Corp. released its second-quarter financial statement. The good…
Earlier this week, The Dallas Morning News ran an editorial under the headline, “Dallas businesses that become criminal hubs must be held responsible.” The newspaper gave City Hall a pat on the back for filing suit against a Texaco station in far East Dallas: “Ratcheting up pressure against property owners…
The thinking behind former Mayor Mike Rawlings’ “Grow South” campaign was that City Hall needed to encourage investment in the city’s historically segregated and economically shortchanged areas. But what was standing in the way in the first place? Multiple causes are commonly invoked, from active racism to passive unawareness of…
